Tuesday, August 20, 2013

If
I refer to all the females in my family (including me) as ‘drama queens’, it
would be an understatement. We strongly believe that if a daughter
to goes on a picnic she may never come back, or buying a two wheeler to a son is
like gifting him death. So you get an idea. Every single thing is blown out of
proportion and every event like marriage, birthday, and graduation is laced
with tears and filmy dialogues and thus dampened. I grew up in such a fiercely loving
yet slightly dramatic home, and even though I am way better in terms of drama,
I seem to carry traces of what was generously bestowed upon me.

However
I was married into a family where people are not as dramatic as us. Goodbyes
here are more matter-of-fact and met with more smiles than tears. So my belief that
my family had the most complex DNAs which made them brutally sensitive and that
they were the first of its kind to have ever walked the earth only got stronger.
I reach for the tissue during any movie that has got anything remotely to do
with emotions. I fought tears and lost when my son got vaccination shots. The
first two weeks of my son’s first daycare was when I ran short of words and tears
or even breath. However I was strong enough to hold my own and not broadcast it
to the rest of the family for obvious reasons.

This
morning I dropped my son at the playschool when I heard loud wails from
outside. A boy, around four, had been enrolled and it was his first day there.
Two people had to stop him from running to his mother, who walked away
hesitantly with her two younger kids. The child refused to pay heed to any act
of consolation, and got too wild and loud to handle. Other children including
my own stood perplexed and helpless. We slowly
left, even though my heart went out to the boy, who was evidently kept home
till that day. As I stepped outside, the mother waited with a miserable look on
her face.

She asked me,’ Is he still crying?’.

I said ‘Yes’.

She
went up to her car, placed the youngest baby carefully on a car seat, fastened
the seat belts for the other child and got on to the driver’s seat. 'Wow', I said. 'She must be the iron lady or something'. As we
started the car to go to office I took one last look of the mother who was
still in her car. She held a ball of tissues and was crying profusely. She kept
wiping her eyes and slowly rested her head on the steering wheel.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Last time Oprah Winfrey made
news, was when she visited India and met the most accomplished people here who are none other than the ones in Bollywood. As she sat across the table for
dinner, she famously asked ‘I hear that some people in India STILL eat with
their hands?’ Then, it was a terrible shame that Madam Winfrey dint know that a
majority of us Indians STILL cannot afford food.

Today as I glanced through the
news, I came across this racism controversy of Ms.Winfrey. A shamefully
ignorant clerk at an upscale store in Switzerland refused to show a purse worth
$38000, (named after Jennifer Aniston), to her because he felt she may not be
able to afford it.

This is 'that' bag!

This is completely believable. I have always told my friends this, when you go to buy clothes, that is
when you should be dressed your best. Because wood headed sales guys often assess
you with what you are wearing and your chances of finding an attire of your
taste depends on that. This was during a
time before malls came into our lives and allowed us to choose what we wanted.
When I was younger there were shops in which clothes were neatly stacked in
cupboards and sales guys across a counter would pick them and display based on
their mood. If you are not very attractive
in their eyes, you will end up buying a reject. This is a painful truth. Storekeepers
measure you by what you wear and how presentable you look.

So Ms. Winfrey was not talking on
her show and therefore might have turned up at this unfortunate Swiss store
dressed for comfort. This is not about the ignorance of that guy who was unable
to recognize her. Whether she can afford it or not is not the point either. It
is the question of the basic right of a person at any store that has stuff on
display. Anything should be accessible to the person who has walked into the
store - without having to meet any prerequisites. The customer needn't arrive in a
limousine walking like it was a red carpet event.

I have met rude and highly self-esteemed
teenagers and young adults who literally have grown head phones from their ear
lobes working as sales persons and delivery boys at various brand outlets. They
are veterans in belittling customers and treating them like dirt. I have also
seen sales persons at showrooms passing their comments and giggling at potentially
vulnerable customers who try on the clothes displayed. I am a programmer by
profession, and my codes do not expect me to smile at them, but I know the basic
code of conduct expected of a person who is in the sales business. Do you or do
you not feel like stepping into that store once again, where you were treated
like a King with faces around that smiled gracefully and talked politely? Is it
so difficult to show minimum civility to any person for that matter? You may
not sell a Chanel or a Louboutin, but people are drawn to you by the way you
treat them. And they will come again by how much you care about their purchase.

I am sure that poor guy at the
Swiss store might have been fired and made to go through a list of Celebrities alive
as on August 2013. It is not about being a celebrity. I may not be Oprah
Winfrey or Jennifer Aniston, but today if I walk in to a Hummer showroom and
ask to be shown a H1, I should be granted the opportunity.

So this time, I guess Oprah was right when she
said that she was snubbed.

Alternatively, she could have
asked,’ Do people in Switzerland STILL find this bag expensive?’